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Falling through a portal into another world (Isekai)

Accelerator

Well-known member
Author
My first attempt at the 'narrative flashback'


My time in this wretched place has been mixed. Falling through a portal was a surprise. Ending up on the ground in some lonely rural village was another. Scared them a good lot. Thankfully whatever sent me here didn't neglect translations, letting me barely speak their language. Which was good enough to make sure they didn't use those pitchforks and torches on me.


Did I mention these guys used animals labour and had no running water? At least, the richer ones got animals. Others pulled by hands. Yup. Just plan wood and mud brick. They gathered, and placed me before some village elders. Had to go through some poking and prodding, and then pronounced 'clean'. Some time after I asked what it was about. Turns out there were a variety of monsters that like to pretend to be humans and eat souls. Comforting.


Entire thing scared the heck out of me but it worked out ok.


Until the next morning came.

These guys were pretty mundane. Being in another world didn't mean they had magic. It just meant different crops. You know what they needed? All the hands htey could get. After a few months of manual labour, and even though I didn't die, I felt I was in hell. I got some stuff going on by wowing them with the phone, but after the battery died, that was that. Still hoping I can get it charged. Those photos were good. That social capital helped me in getting stuff like seed drills. Other ones they didn't like. Tradition or something. What else could I do? My attempt at a garden died, and no way can I pull off crop rotation.

Though it was fun teaching some of them math. Hope they'll have a use for it some day. Learning can't be wrong.


But I had to go. Work was running low after the planting season, and I didn't have the social skills to rely on their charity. Especially not after the blasphemy.


But I had to leave. Not only was it horrible, but work was running low. And I didn't have the social skills to make sure not to be kicked out to die. Especially not after the accidental blasphemy. Know how in my old world we didn't have gods? Well, turns out they do have them here. Made an ass out of myself and I don't think I was able to rely on their charity for much longer. The god was nice, though. I think. Hard to see expressions on a bundle of wheat stalks.


Leaving them was hard, but staying would have been even harder. I wandered around the area for a long while, travelling, fighting, and just staying around. Learned some new tricks. Tricks which would have been interesting in my old world, but were mostly normal in this place. Little party tricks. Not much, but enough to get me a roof over my head. Some part of me rebelled against it, saying it wasn't scientific or reliable. But the saner parts of me just decided that it was best to just shut up. I had to do a lot of that. First thing I realized after trying to get into the world of magic was... it wasn't for me.

Oh, there was magic all around. Women who were made of fire. Snakes which could phase through walls and spit out streams of water. Gods, mages, martial artists who could jump over a house. But it wasn't for me. It was for others. Tried to get magic tutoring. Didn't work out for me. So now all I'm stuck here with is the weaker magic. Small rituals. Trying to get deeper did not work out. Plenty of pain in teaching me that. So much as I hate it, I have to stay away from the supernatural. Focus on alchemy and warding rituals and exorcism. Guys like me, being near the supernatural is just asking for trouble. Saw a lot of shit. Had to compromise. Had to keep my head down.


Kinda like everyone else. You'd think being from another world would give me a leg up, but it just kept me ignorant. Nearly got eaten by a ghost once. At least the chemistry lessons helped.


But anyway, I'm here in what can be called my lab. I've finally got the lodestones, which cost me roughly 2 months worth of work to obtain from that merchant. And now I'm slowly tracing them along an iron rod from the local blacksmith. There, in my rustic and yet cleaned lab, lit by candlelight, surrounded by books, glassware, ingredient, and the 1 book I've managed to save. Just a table and a few benches. It was comparatively easy work compared to everything else I've tried to do. Easy enough that I had time to reflect and go back on things I don't want to think about.





From the perspective of a native I'm doing pretty well. Marketable skills that are in demand all year round, and can fit anywhere and anywhen. Considering all the monsters here, no one's going to reject someone with a talent in making wards and some alchemy. I've got enough connections to get a foot into quite a few doors, and maybe somewhere above middle class if I stretch it. I'm not a sorcerer so I'm not a big enough fish to be hunted down and killed. I've got my own lab. I've had some excellent ideas, like the usage of a delivery/ bookstore to cater to the local middle class for their books and their attempts to be on the 'in' of the upper class elite. I managed to get the principles of the printing press and put it into pottery, so I have some money from the local pottery guild. And hey, there's a cute girl by the market selling pie of mysterious meat.


From the perspective of someone from my world I'm failing badly. I've got neat tricks but nothing compared to what's at home, or compared to what I've seen. The beings here... they scare me. They scare everyone. Everyone's afraid. They hide it but the obsequiousness is there. I'm not powerful enough to be a target, and not powerful enough to stop any bad stuff. I can't stop a rampaging demigod. I can't stop a god throwing a hissy fit. I used to have all human knowledge in the palm of my hand. After my phone ran out, I find myself trapped within my own skull in a world where 80% of everyone is illiterate. My lab is clean and tidy. But painfully basic. I don't even have thermometers (despite trying to commission one; I can't afford it). I don't have an autoclave or microscope, and I have no idea how to begin making them. Attempts to create steam engine, the bessemer process, and the rest failed. I don't even know if microbes exist in this world. Maybe there really were little demons?


The iron rod now attracted a small iron bit with a thunk. Good. It was magnetized. I closed my eyes, stopping myself from staring at the wall. The magnetic lines.... they still existed here. At least this physical law still worked. I visualized it, left hand twitching. The magnetic lines cutting through entire coils of wire, slowly pushing the electrons through the copper circuit. A divine clockwork, a complete mechanism that never stops spinning.

I stuck the now magnet into the gymbal and began to rotate it. This would take trial and error. It didn't really matter how it was set up, as long as the magnetic lines intersected the copper. Just changes how fast the charge would build up. And time was all I had.

Really now, this was a horrifying place. Eugenics. Superpowers, with people using them as people tend to. A lack of anything resembling 'equality before the law' and humanism. And of course, why would it be? There were gods here. Superpowered transhumans. Magic. Elementals. Demons. Why would it have the human rights and laws that I would be used to? That I cared so much about? That often made life worth living.

Bzzzt.


There was a sparking sound; I looked up, distracted from my thoughts. There it was. A spark leaping through a gap in the wire. So soft and yet in this room it sounded louder than a bell. I began to spin faster, staring at the gap. Bzzzt. There it was again. A small spark. So I have now created a dynamo in a place where no one even had steam engines.


So now what?

I had it but no practical applications. My neighbours think I'm a kook (the failed experiments didn't help). How do you make it useful? It took decades to make a working generator and motor, in a culture that had had the industrial revolution. And then what? Try to convince them to create electricity? Try to make another automated loom, when I failed? Try to make gunpowder again? Getting even more money and power, which would put me into the cross hairs of the court and the supernatural? Cross hairs I won't survive; not with my skills and non-existent lineage. Making interesting toys in my lab is all I can do, and for the foreseeable future, it's all I can do. An entire life toiling in obscurity, with constant embarassing and expensive failures? Looking down the road ahead, all I have is at best being ordinary in a world where I can be killed at any moment, in a world without working antibiotics, no civil rights, and barely any technology.

I could give up. I could just take the money I had and spend it on wine and women. And slaves. It's not like anyone here's going to care or even notice. Just give up ideas of improvement and going back home, and just relax. No one would think lesser of me; not like they'll know the full story.

The dark thoughts went away as fast as they came.

No, I couldn't give up. Not for me, and not for the people in the future. There were plenty of inventors and scientists who dove around in the dark, trying to burn away ignorance. Most of them died penniless, alone, and forgotten, until they were vindicated decades later. How could I even give up, knowing what I know, when I have the luxury of certainty? I had to at least try. And it's alright if I die forgotten, as long as in the future, someone picks up the torch from where I left off.

I stood up, body energised by this new thought, enthusiasm rising again. That was when I realized that the room was bright. Really bright. I turned to the candle. It had blown out, a thin waft of smoke from the wick. So where was the light coming from?





Then I looked down. Stories tend to say that there was a snappy comeback or line of rhetoric in situations like this. All I said when I realized I was glowing was: "Oh hell, what's happening this time?"
 
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